What does A Day In The Life mean?

Beatles: A Day In The Life Meaning

Album cover for A Day In The Life album cover

Song Released: 1967


A Day In The Life Lyrics

I read the news today oh, boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of...

  1. anonymous
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    Jul 15th 2012 !⃝

    Call me crazy, but could "holes" mean "graves"?

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  2. anonymous
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    Apr 11th 2012 !⃝

    Now this is a mixed opinion. i do not believe nor disagree. through most of the Beatles works they reference one thing may it be Revelation9 or strawberry fields.apparently in 1970 Paul die in a car accident by ramming in to another car and then his car exploded.this may or may not be a conspiracy theory but apparently the back up Paul took McCartney's place.there are hidden messages in all the Beatles works.

    PS.the last line is "it really couldn't be any other way" and that's played forwards

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  3. smith
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    Feb 5th 2012 !⃝

    Never read as much rubbish on these lyrics .its simply about the rubbish written by headline writers or in film scripts etc and how people need to be 'turned on' to more important matters.

    The reference to 4000 holes in blackburn relates to the town centre there which was undergoing a massive facelift with building holes all over.hence a headline saying the holes would fill the albert hall.the lyric just says 'this is bollocks' there are more important things to think about.

  4. ormewood
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    Oct 23rd 2011 !⃝

    It's about the disconnect that we all have from directly experiencing life...how we get caught up with petty details in order to shield ourselves from the horrifying aspects of living, but end up making ourselves less alive in the process.

  5. John Jameson
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    Jul 15th 2011 !⃝

    The rising crescendo's that the orchestra reaches on this track was actually an attempt to create "A musical orgasm".

  6. anonymous
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    Jul 8th 2011 !⃝

    the part about the guy in the car was a newspaper article. the part about the war was something about 'how i won the war'. pauls part was just random stuff and the part about blackburn lancashire was again an article.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  7. anonymous
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    May 11th 2011 !⃝

    The original poster seems to have missed the fact that buses in the UK are (still) often 'double-deckers'. In my mind, he has not arrived at his destination when he 'found my way upstairs and had a smoke'. He is still on the bus. In those days smoking was allowed on buses, but only ever on the top deck.

  8. anonymous
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    Apr 28th 2011 !⃝

    People are buried with no shoes on in england? Is that so. I think thats been made up on the spot. I've never heard that and im a yorkshireman.

  9. anonymous
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    Apr 9th 2011 !⃝

    It is a masterpiece of the articulation of the pursuits of each and every human experience: in so far as it is reflective of all individuals trying to wrench out and grasp a (the) meaning so as to get the clue that would lead one to (a) base footing to grasp the ungraspable emphemoral; transitory life experince.

    As it just to big,to accept and forgive that there is nothing more to ones life experience than the oppoprtunity have a sensory perceptual event.

    i.e. We look for clues to that THERE HAS TO BE MORE TO THIS (My Life); So we all set out and look; For The More in the songs of the Beatles; The symphony of the Mozarts: the views of the Aristotles; the Heart of the Jesus(s): The mind of the Budha (s); The Wisdoms & Graces of (the) GOD(s)

    Could it Really Be
    That WE ARE
    JUST DUST IN THE WINDS <3

  10. anonymous
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    Mar 18th 2011 !⃝

    "I read the news today, oh, boy. . . About a lucky man who made the grade.'' They say that, the guy have a car accident. Some say it's Paul McCartney, the base player on the Beatles. I'm no expert, but some song of the Beatles say that Paul McCartney's dead!Look at the Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band Album cover,look at the word "BEATLES" under that are yellow flowers formed to a base, it's like they're saying Paul McCartney's dead. . .

    I am not destroying the Beatles name, I am still their fan, but I'm confused. . .

  11. anonymous
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    Feb 26th 2011 !⃝

    4,000 holes means heroin addicts.
    They compare that to what it soon became, and that's why the song is called A Day In The Life.

  12. anonymous
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    Feb 20th 2011 !⃝

    I don't understand the VERY LAST 25 seconds of the song..... I don't remember hearing this in the album, but on the iTunes version, at the very end of the song, there's a high pitched ring, a laugh, and then some robot saying something like, "I never do see any of the world" and then repeating it like 5 times...

  13. anonymous
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    Jan 14th 2011 !⃝

    Get back was written as a very racist and offensive song in the Beatles early days, but as their popularity took off, they quickly changed the lyrics to divorce themselves from the nasty politics that spawned this song.
    The songs current meaning is the Beatles looking embarrassed about the original meaning which was telling immigrates to get out of england, ie Get back to where you once belonged.

  14. anonymous
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    Jan 6th 2011 !⃝

    This song is about Paul dying in the car accident in the mid-1960's. the first
    "I read the news today oh, boy
    About a lucky man who made the grade
    And though the news was rather sad
    Well I just had to laugh
    I saw the photograph

    He blew his mind out in a car
    He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
    A crowd of people stood and stared
    They’d seen his face before,
    Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of lords"

    That's what it is about. Notice on the cover of Abby Road he is in a suit and barefoot. That's how they bury you. Then they broke up shortly after. Think about it, Lennon and McCartney were best friends and had been that way since the Quarrymen. Two best friends/brilliant song writers don't just break up like that. I think that Billy Shears, the winner of the "Paul McCartney Look Alike" Contest as mentioned in Sgt Peppers, didn't get along well with John, and I also think that Paul didn't get the rightful burial and John was upset about that as well. Also, did anybody else notice that Paul's singles/albums got really stupid after they broke up? It's like the guy conformed... definitely not right. Plus, if you are an experienced Beatles fan, you can hear the difference in tone between Billy Shears and Paul McCartney. To the "naked" ear, you wouldn't be able to hear it.

  15. anonymous
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    Dec 27th 2010 !⃝

    This song tells the story of how John Lennon found out about his mother's death. She was killed in a car accident by a man who went through a stop light. Most of the song was originally written by John alone.
    The "I'd love to turn you on..." part was actually suggested by Paul, and in reality had nothing to do with the song. John did not like this part because it wasn't relevant to the true story.




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